#4 The Church

Ahhhh....religion and politics...best topics ever, no? Ummm, no, definitely. Before I go on, please note that I do not mean to demoralize anyone's beliefs or non-beliefs and these words and opinions are strictly my own.

That said, I was raised a Catholic. Baptized, communionized, confirmationized.......the whole enchilada. Non of which was by choice. Dear friends, my parents come from different religious backgrounds (my Mom being a (non-practicing) Muslim and my dad a (devout) Roman Catholic). My parents wanted to raise my sisters and I with some form of a religious background, and being that my mom is non-practicing, Roman Catholicism was the default. Sometime in high school, I started questioning my faith (in Catholicism, not God) and stopped practicing. While I like to consider myself a child of all religions, J, who was also raised a Catholic, is very adamant about marrying in a Catholic church.

I am ok with this because it is more important for J to marry in a Catholic church than it is for me not to. Make sense? So, that being resolved, it was time for us to find a church to marry in. (Yes, even though J wants to get married in a church he no longer belongs to a particular one.)

Chicago is ripe with Catholic churches, but the decision came down to four.

1. St. Viator: This is the church my Dad has been a parishioner at for the last couple of decades.

2. Holy Name Cathedral: This is the church my younger sister, C, got married in three years ago.

3. St. Mary of the Angels: This is close to our reception venue. J has attended some masses there as a youngster.

4. Holy Trinity: This is also close to the reception venue and has also been attended by J as a youngster.

So what was our first choice? St. Mary of the Angels. When considering a church, we were looking for some particulars, such as:

- Aesthetics. I wanted to marry in a church that was beautiful and needed little decoration. (What? Don't judge me.)
- Availability. It needed to work with the date we had picked out.
- Distance in relation to the reception venue. We wanted it to be as close as possible.

So, while St. Mary of the Angels had us at aesthetics and distance, our date was not available. Moving forward, we had decided against St. Viator because of the distance and against Holy Name Cathedral because of recent events (fires and whatnot). So, we are getting married at Holy Trinity. I called and spoke with the priest who informed me that he would hold the date and time and we would just need to come in to speak with him and put down a deposit. Which we've already done.

What type of venue are you having your ceremony at and how did you come that decision?